10 Reasons You Should Be Meditating

Meditation has countless benefits on your health and life in general. Here are some great reasons to make meditation a part (even if it is a small part) of your daily rountine.

1. It increases your mental clarity and focus by eliminating incessant mind chatter created by an endless stream of thoughts.

2. Morning meditation sets a positive, peaceful energy into motion that infuses itself into the rest of your activities for the day (after a while you will notice things running more smoothly on their own).

3. Evening meditation helps you unwind from your day and improves sleep quality.

4. Injecting positive, specific intentions into a non-thought space during meditation helps your intentions manifest faster.

5. Meditation automatically reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, reduces muscle tension, and improves breathing.

6. Meditation improves your ability to receive. Ask yourself specific questions before a meditation (Who am I? What is my purpose? What is the best solution to this problem?), quiet your mind, and then listen. Meditation puts you in touch with the silence that holds the answers.

7. Meditation jumpstarts your intuition, creativity, and inspiration. A quiet, relaxed mind is more likely to receive an intuitive hit than a frazzled one.

8. Meditation helps to release negative energy and toxic emotions.

9. Meditation triggers self-healing mechanisms that activate the body's natural immune system.

10. Meditation helps you fully focus and channel your energy into each present moment. It makes you more powerful and effective in the present.

The Placebo Effect and Why It Should Matter To You

One of the most fascinating aspects of my job is being able to evaluate clinical trials for different drugs: figuring out how trials are designed and what the data actually means. One of the tenets of evidence-based medicine is that trials should be "double-blinded, placebo controlled." What this means in plain English is that patients are divided up into two groups, one group is given the drug and the other is given a "placebo" or fake pill. Double blinded simply means neither group knows which it is getting. Sounds straightforward and logical, right?

The ignored part of this equation is what this type of study design is actually trying to control. Scientists have long known that when you tell a person they are getting a medicine (even if it is a sugar pill), and the person actually believes to their core that they are getting treated, a lot of times that person will actually get better!! This to me, as a physician, is incredible. Why does this happen? And what are the implications?

It is hard to deny that there is some sort of mind over matter effect going on here. And it is a well-known phenomenon, which is why all trials have to control for it. Quantum medicine believes that what you think about your health and your body (both consciously and subconsciously) matters. It matters a lot. Your vibrational energy level, which to a large part is driven by the energy of your thoughts, dictates the degree to which your body can activate its own healing and defense mechanisms to ward off and cure disease.

If it is hard for you to believe that your thoughts have influence over your body, look at examples from your own experience. Have you ever felt afraid about something and then felt your heart beat faster? Have you ever been anxious and felt a knot in your stomach? Have you ever gotten into an argument or had a prolonged unpleasant interaction with someone and then developed a headache afterward? It is hard to deny that emotions have an effect over your body. That's why they call it a stress ulcer. It's why strong emotions are known to trigger asthma attacks in some people. It's why when you are doing a job you don't like all day long, you come home to tense neck and back muscles.

Dis-ease is your body's way of telling you that your thoughts and energy vibration are out of whack. Emotional, psychological, or physical stress shows up as symptoms. Every time. The good news is that it works the other way around too. Your body would much rather respond to a positive focus than cope with your usual negative orientation (I am sick. I hurt. My body has let me down and the doctor told me there something wrong with my stomach / heart / muscles / whatever) . If you give your mind a subconscious suggestion (which is exactly what a placebo accomplishes), and your mind actually believes it, then your vibrational energy patterns begin to recalibrate to that new belief system, and begin to realign the cells of your body to the orientation of wellness, which is their natural orientation. It is really quite extraordinary.

Each individual has varying results to a drug or a placebo not only because of physiological (or constitutional) differences, but because of differing thought patterns. If, for instance, you have a belief that the medicine is helping somewhat, but you are also strongly focused on your symptoms, the pain you are experiencing, or see yourself as fundamentally not well, then the degree to which the medicine "works" will be mixed.

Your thoughts are like vectors in physics. If you have a vector going right pulling at 20 mph, and you have another vector pulling left in the exact opposite direction at 10 mph, then guess what? You will end up going right at only 10 mph. But, if you do not have any negative thoughts or attention in the opposite direction, the speed and degree of your positive thoughts go unopposed, and your wellness vector gains momentum.

So whether you believe in taking medications for chronic diseases or not (either belief system is valid- so don't feel guilty either way!), do yourself and your body a favor and start cleaning up your thoughts. Start focusing your thoughts and visualize what it would feel like to be healthy. It's not so much about fighting against dis-ease (remember, what you resist, persists), as it is looking in the direction of ease. Reorient your belief about yourself as fundamentally well and in balance. Incorporate meditation and exercise as a daily part of your routine, to give chronic stress and negativity (which act as toxins to your cells) an outlet. And then let go, with a strong conscious belief that your mind and body will take care of the rest.

Eating Your Way to Wellness

So in a previous article, I promised to share some tips on how to improve overall health, and even reverse disease by addressing underlying energy imbalances. One of the least controversial means of preventing and altering disease is through nutrition. Everyone pretty much recognizes that better eating habits can help prevent obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. So I won't focus on that here.

But did you know that specific nutritional deficiencies could be the underlying cause of otherwise unexplained symptoms? You are what you eat. The energy derived from food plays a huge factor in the vibrational energy state of the cells of your body. Cells are constantly responding to this energy. Nutritional deficiencies are often overlooked by physicians, since associated symptoms are often vague, non-specific, and chronic. It is also important to note that not all illnesses have a nutritional deficiency as their underlying cause - but there are certainly some known links to consider.

Here are some common nutritional deficiencies and their associated symptoms:

B Vitamins : fatigue, pale skin, numbness or tingling, a poor sense of balance, inflammation and bleeding in the gums, confusion, dermatitis.

Iron : fatigue, lack of energy, weakness, pale mucosal linings, rapid heartbeat, brittle nails or hair, shortness of breath, headache.

Essential Fatty Acids: fatigue, acne, dull, dry skin and hair, poor wound healing, eczema, premenstrual syndrome, and attention deficit disorder. EFAs are also great at reducing systemic inflammation and decrease risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

Antioxidants: pre-maturely aging skin, cataracts, brown skin spots, stiff, numb fingers, and oversensitivity to sunlight. Antioxidants act as free radical scavengers and help prevent cancer, heart disease, and macular degeneration.

If I had to pick two of the most underutilized nutrients that are vital to disease prevention, it would be EFAs (omega 3, 6, and 9 acids) and antioxidants. Together, these decrease inflammation, stress, and accumulated damage from free radicals in the body, which are underlying components of almost all illness.

For a more complete list, I particularly like the information in the following site :
http://1stholistic.com/nutrition/hol_nutr-def-symptoms.htm

If you have any of the these symptoms, try adding a variety of foods to your diet that are rich in whatever vitamin or mineral you are lacking. Alternatively, you can also try a vitamin supplement. One of the keys to altering nutrition is that it takes time (a period of weeks) to see changes. A lot of times, people don't notice a big difference right away, so it's easy to give up or think your changes aren't working. Remember, this isn't a quick fix. You have to give your cells time to recalibrate and absorb the new energy. Most importantly, nutrition is one of the best means of prevention, so don't discount the added benefit of all of the problems that you will be avoiding by eating well in the first place! Happy eating!

What Anger Does To Your Body

The American Psychological Association just published a great article on the effects of anger on the body (http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/11/03/hm.anger.management/index.html). Toxic emotions like anger increase your blood pressure, heart rate, send stress hormones coursing through your body, deplete you of energy, and make it harder to think clearly. Is it any wonder that heart attacks happen at a greater frequency on Monday mornings than any other day or time in the week?

So what are some practical alternatives to being angry?

Effectively dealing with toxic emotions means not suppressing them and letting them build up, but also not letting them take control of you. Negative emotions are your guidance system. They are like a flashing light in your car - an indicator that something is going on. The key to understanding your emotions is to consciously figure out what the root cause of the emotion is, and deal with that. If you can't change whatever "that" is (a person, situation, environment), walk away from it. If you can't walk away from it, change your thinking about it. Don't resist it; accept it fully, and then create change from a place of full acceptance. Remember, what you resists, persists. Far from being a sign of weakness, acceptance actually puts you in a more empowered place because you are no longer expending energy resisting.

As you alter your environment or thinking, your emotional guidance system will automatically recalibrate to your new point of focus. And what you focus on expands. As you find an emotion like anger dissipating, you will notice physical changes. Your breathing might become more regular. Your shoulder and neck muscles might relax. And you just might begin thinking more clearly and find the solution that had escaped you before.